"Welcome to the training room."
The feminine voice echoed through a vast white space.
It wasn't a room… but a featureless cube, like a blank sheet of paper folded endlessly into the horizon.
The system appeared before him:
────────────────────────
Main System
────────────────────────
◉ Personal Data
◉ Operations
◉ Arsenal
◉ Network (No opportunities available at this time)
────────────────────────
He opened the Operations tab.
Three sub-tabs appeared:
■ Daily Missions
■ Side Missions (Unavailable)
■ Main Mission (Locked)
He selected Daily Missions.
────────────────────────
Daily Missions
────────────────────────
● Running / Completed
- 2 km in under 12 minutes
● Strength & Posture Training / Completed
- 100 push-ups
- 100 pull-ups
- 10 minutes prone sniper position
● Precision Shooting – Static Targets / Completed
- Hit 20 static targets (100 m – 300 m – 500 m)
● Precision Shooting – Moving Target / In Progress
- You have 20 rounds to hit one moving target
● Wind Challenge / Failed
- Estimate wind direction and strength and fire at a distant target (300 m+)
● Mental Focus / In Progress
- Breathing control and yoga session
────────────────────────
He had finished the run with a decent time, completed the push-ups and pull-ups, and emerged from the prone sniper posture drill with his back screaming in protest.
Even static shooting… he had hit 12 out of 20 targets.
The long-range targets in particular were his enemy; the accuracy was there, but the stability… disastrous.
As for the wind challenge…
He failed it, as usual, in spectacular fashion.
Estimating wind was not one of his skills in any way.
Two missions remained:
■ Mental training
■ Moving targets
He opened the stats screen for just a moment.
One glance was enough to make him sigh in annoyance.
He hated this screen.
The cold, stripped-down interface exposed him, laid him bare as if he were standing naked under a surgeon's light.
The numbers weren't just evaluations… they were verdicts.
Some of the ratings appeared:
Stability: D — a slight tremor in every shot, as if his muscles remembered he was a beginner no matter how much he pretended otherwise.
Focus: C- — starts strong… then erodes quickly, like the wick of a burning candle.
Discipline: F — his worst stat. A bottomless free fall.
Perception: F+ — like a child trying to read the direction of air flowing through a tunnel.
The rest of the attributes were no kinder.
Only accuracy shone… with a B rating.
He knew his problem:
Physically capable, technically weak, mentally average…
And the peak of his suffering lay in something very simple called discipline—
The ability to recover breathing and focus immediately after making a mistake.
And that was what he always lost.
He sat on the mat and began the yoga and breathing exercises.
Inhale… exhale…
He tried to empty his mind, but all he could think of was how easy life had been in front of a computer screen, and how "retry" was no longer a button… but life or death.
He finished the session and stood up.
"Now… moving targets."
He selected the mission.
The white space transformed into a long shooting range.
A circular target appeared, moving horizontally at a distance between 100 and 150 meters, at a constant speed.
He picked up the Remington 783.
Raised it.
Breathed…
And fired.
First shot: center hit.
Second: hit.
Third: same.
"Nice…" he muttered with a small smile.
Then suddenly—
The target stopped.
The system gave no warning.
He fired without thinking… and missed.
"Damn it."
Instead of resetting his breathing and calming down…
He fired a second shot immediately.
Missed again.
"Damn it, damn it…"
He began grinding his teeth in anger.
And the mistakes started repeating… again and again…
Because his head was boiling instead of cooling down.
Every mistake… produced a bigger one.
Until he was left with only a single round.
He took a long breath, focused…
Fired.
He hit the target.
Immediately after, the system announced:
[Training complete… calculating results]
He lowered his head.
Damn it…
He knew he was weak in discipline.
He knew he struggled to regain calm immediately after a mistake.
He knew everything.
But knowing your weakness… isn't enough to fix it.
The final notification appeared:
[Daily performance evaluated]
● Running: B-
● Strength Training: A
● Static Targets: C+
● Moving Target: D
● Wind Challenge: F
● Mental Focus: B
Overall evaluation for today's missions: C
He sighed as he wiped his forehead.
This was his true level.
These were his current limits.
And no matter how much experience he had from games—no matter how many weapon designers' names he memorized—
This… was another world.
A world where wind, heartbeat, sweat, and pressure…
All exposed the fragility of the player who thought himself an expert behind a screen.
Renji returned to his camp, the disappointment of the day's evaluation clinging to him like the lingering smell of sweat on his body.
He sat on his bed, staring at the space around him through the small window of the cabin.
The trees swayed in the wind, and the scent of the damp forest filled the air.
"C… a C rating…"
He muttered to himself, as if the word were heavy as iron.
He remembered that in the first stage he had received a B-, and felt furious back then.
Now, after all the training, he dreamed of that rating—
A few more days and the second stage would end, and everything would become nothing more than a faint memory.
He tossed his rifle onto the bed.
There was no time to celebrate, and no time to complain.
Questions continued to knock at his mind from every direction:
Why was he here?
How had he arrived in this reality?
What was the goal?
But he barely began to find answers—
And realized that searching for them now was a waste of energy.
Nothing would change his current situation.
"Questions… won't help me now…"
He muttered, then closed his eyes for a moment, just trying to clear his head of excessive thoughts.
Suddenly, the virtual girl's voice broke from its usual monotony.
It wasn't the cold, mechanical tone he was used to…
It sounded natural, human, carrying a genuine note of warning:
"There is an intruder."
His heart jolted.
He raised his head toward the small window of his cabin, but saw nothing.
He kept staring at the dancing shadows between the trees…
Until he heard violent rustling above him.
A leap.
Then another.
Branches shook violently, as if something massive were moving among them with unexpected agility.
And suddenly, a huge shadow bent down through the leaves, revealing a strange head covered in thick orange hair.
An orangutan.
But not an ordinary one.
Massive, nearly rivaling the size of the tapir he had faced before, its eyes gleaming with unusual intelligence.
It paused for a moment, observing the hanging cabin…
Then it seemed to notice Renji directly.
Renji froze in place, his hand trembling on his rifle.
"Damn it…"
He whispered, feeling that everything he had built of safety was fragile…
And could collapse in an instant.
______
Author's Explanation:
Orangutan:
The orangutan is a great ape that lives in the forests of Southeast Asia. It is distinguished by its long arms and high intelligence, enabling it to use tools. It spends most of its life in the trees, moves slowly and cautiously, and is considered one of the most solitary and calm primates.